


Slowdancing on Landmines

by blesser



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Assassination attempts, Canon Compliant, Famer Bucky Compliant, Linen Shirts, M/M, Positive Communication Porn, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Semi Functioning Superheroes in Love, Steve's Beard Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:38:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blesser/pseuds/blesser
Summary: It's the oldest Steve has ever looked and there's nothing about it that doesn't make Bucky want to reach over and cover his face with his hand, shield his eyes from the sun, get his fingers in those little baby crow’s feet impressions on his temples. He sets the cup not so silently into the saucer and scowls."Is that a linen shirt?"***“Everything we do is falling… I never bought into status and power – even fear of death – as independent drivers. The platform we stand on, or fall from, is love.” – The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson





	Slowdancing on Landmines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dark_And_Twisted_Thing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_And_Twisted_Thing/gifts).



> A gift for the fool who said I couldn't make acid attacks sexy. Happy Birthday punk <3 And because it was confirmed by a higher power that that simply can not have been the first time they saw each other again.
> 
> Title from Landmines by Bellsaint

i.

_"To men like that, time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really, he thinks, it's a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it, fighting for it. Working so hard not to spill one single drop."_

_\- All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doer_

 

He catches up in Kisumu.

It's a draw that pulls him across the city, like a locked on missile.

It prickles his skin as soon as he enters the building like some sixth sense and, sure enough, there it is. It's the goddamn built in homing beacon they couldn't seem to quite beat out of him, that old sunlight on blonde mirage. A hundred summer days and fire escapes and the brightest mud stained thing in the trench.

Jesus, he thinks, it's just hair. Albeit the hair on the head that sits a little taller and a hell of a lot fairer than the rest of the crowd in the packed out coffee house. Weeks of vivid dreaming and he’s _right there_ , on the far side of a terraced café in Freedom Park on a Wednesday afternoon.

It's about a million degrees despite the heavy summer rain and so, sun drenched and also literally drenched, Bucky weaves his way through the tables and across the sodden tiles as if pulled by some invisible, automatic, zip-wire force.

Informed by years of practice, the hair-trigger wise part of him knows better than to clap a hand on an unsuspecting shoulder, especially of a man with both his back to you and possesing a punch like a grizzly bear.

Weighing up all the options, the skinned knee, fool of a joker inside Bucky wrangles his way to the surface and apparently just can't resist.

Steve takes it well, doesn't jump overtly or even put down his cup, but every muscle tenses imperceptibly. His free hand that was holding the corner of a broadsheet shoots up with casual immediacy, as though he were merely turning the page. Trademark cool, Steve doesn't look up, but meets his mark with a vice like grip.

In response to his touch, something pops in Bucky's right wrist.

"Uncle," he says, semi seriously.

"Son of a bitch," Steve smiles and whips his head up, face in sun bleached profile and eyes hidden behind huge reflective aviators.

There's a good, long, twenty seconds where a few fat flies mark the passing of time, their wings a funny drumroll _badum tsh_ commentary on the moment. The world tilts Bucky into a trapped animal moment of anxiety under the scrutiny before they both relax a little.

Steve seems to realise he isn't under attack and relaxes infintesimally. He suspends them both, with just one hand curled around a tiny white cup and the other all the way finger to palm around Bucky's wrist. When he applies pressure again it isn't in defence.

A long enough stretch passes for a pulse check ten times over.

Bucky jostles the grip loose with a reluctant hip to shoulder move and hooks a foot around a spare chair, screeching it up on the tile. He sits and squints around nonchalantly, wishing he could rub at his wrist.

He fidgets, something he is allowed to do now, and presses his hand against the cool ceramic tabletop, checks the date at the top of the paper –local sports pages based on the language and photographs- and finally shifts to take the espresso from Steve’s now lax grip. Bucky tests the weight of the cup against the ache in his one remaining radius before he sips or speaks.

"Steve Goddamn Rogers," he says eventually.

He just says it. It falls out of his mouth like a baby tooth, painful and natural all at once.

Bucky clamps his mouth shut but receives a raised eyebrow for his trouble anyway, arched and sly and much like the rest of Steve's posture so far, lazily moved. It's absurdly disconcerting how everything about the sight of him is familiar but alien. His whole vibe and demeanor are far too soft in comparison to all the jumbled snapshot memory snippets peiced together in Bucky’s head. 

This is a Steve that doesn't look on edge or in control or sick or hungry, in fact, he looks like he's been poured into his chair. Bucky’s mind jars and falters pleasantly at the sight.

"So _that's_ what that stands for?" Steve says, still smiling small with his eyes downturned behind the shades, leg kicked casually up on the table base bracket.

"What's that," Bucky says easily, "you forgetting your name now too pal?"

"It's been a while since somebody's used it."

"Cry me a fucking river Rogers."

"I guess they must've put it on the tombstone though," Steve ploughs on with laughter in his voice, "under 'out ice fishing' or something."

"Arlington?"

"That's what they tell me."

"Damn. First having a name and now having a tombstone? Anything else you wanna brag about?" Bucky monotones, "throw in an arm quip and go three for three why don't ya."

"That's not a thing," Steve taps the paper like a preacher citing a bible.

"You know that's in Dholuo right?"

"It's mostly just scores, figures."

"Hm,” Bucky leans back to shut his eyes against the glare of the sun and tilts his face up to it, “well I'd say read it aloud and teach me something, but I've got a lot of trigger numbers and this is a day of rest, not a day of punching."

"Shit. There's a set day for that?"

"You didn't get the instruction manual?"

"Was it in English?"

"Asshole," Bucky says. In Russian.

Steve grins and then a silence falls, the weightless Sunday afternoon kind. Bucky drinks Steve's coffee in one big gulp and it tastes nothing like dirt burnt chicory ration tin metal blood but everything like _coffee_ instead. Small victories. It burns all the way down.

It is wonderful.

Steve doesn't comment, just turns back to the paper and reads, every so often reaching up to scratch at his beard or nudge his shades up his sweaty nose. As he does, with his face all funny and screwed up like that, mouth all twisted, he looks like a cantankerous old man, frowning at the newspaper and ready to nap.

Bucky can't stop side eyeing him.

It's the oldest Steve has ever looked and there is nothing about the view that doesn't make Bucky want to reach over and cover his face with his hand, shield his eyes further from the sun, get his fingers in those little baby crow’s feet impressions on his temples. He sets the cup not so silently into the saucer and scowls.

"Is that a linen shirt?"

"Guess so," Steve tells the paper, "hey, finally, a win."

"You on vacation or something?"

"On vacation from being on the run?" Steve huffs a laugh, "sure. Are you?"

"On vacation from being on the run, or wearing a linen shirt?"

A page turns and a faux-innocent, questioning noise follows it.

"Look at me. Steve."

 _Act the rebel all you want, but the soldier remains,_ Bucky thinks viciously as Steve takes the order and slides his gaze up over the glasses directly without pause or facade.

"I am looking at you Buck," he says, all quiet and serious with the weight of a thousand caring fucking suns in his eyes.

"Ok, Jesus," because the focus of that stare is somehow worse than the indifference, Bucky leans forward awkwardly to prop his elbow on the table and hide his own face in his hand, "alright. God. Just it's been-"

"I know."

Steve pushes his glasses onto hus head, they make a mess of his hair which is too long, and his eyes look too sad and guarded from where Bucky is sitting, peeking through his fingers.

"I know that. But I don't know how to play this."

"So quit playing Steve. What are you doing here?"

"What am I-" Steve looks genuinely flustered, "what are you doing here?"

The silence is as heavy and fraught as the rain on the thin canvas roof.

Across the tiles, a commotion kicks up as an umbrella collapses, drenching the dinner guests. They laugh and tip their heads and open their mouths up to the cool rainfall as a deluge of water sweeps their used crockery to the tiles.

The noise of their mirth sounds like screaming to Bucky and he drags his attention back with a steadying breath.

"When did you wake up?" Steve is repeating.

Bucky shifts in his seat.

"Six months ago."

"Is that so," Steve smiles secretively, stretching his arms above his head like the cocky bastard he is, showing off a shirt that is both delightfully creased and a little sweaty and a little pale strip of skin, "hm, remember when you used to lie about curfew?"

"No," Bucky says honestly.

"Oh," his face falls, "well it was actually because you were working two- anyway, point is, I am calling bullshit. You didn't wake up six months ago."

"What are you, some kind of super spy?"

Steve looks embarrassed, he ducks his head and scratches at that beard. It's a stalling method, Bucky has seen it a million times on all kinds of people, notably the ones who are all kinds of afraid.

"Why are you lying Buck?"

He sighs.

"Because it's too soon. I shouldn't be here," he snaps, "story of my life."

Steve smiles despite himself.

"Me neither pal."

"Freak of nature."

"Lab rat."

They're laughing as a young man comes to clear the cup away, he has a quick stilted conversation with Steve and it allows Bucky to clock out for a second and listen to the rain. He's enjoying the lack of decision making since he stepped off the jet this morning and the way Steve gestures at Bucky while he talks to the man. It's like he thinks he knows what's best for him or something. Bucky thinks idly that that should be infuriating, triggering or mocking. It just feels easier.

"Ariyo," Steve says with a broad, clunky American accent that seems a little put on, "erokamano."

The waiter claps Steve on the shoulder good naturedly and withdraws back into the cool cafe.

"Impressive," Bucky says.

"Natasha," Steve says by way of explanation, "and a phrase book. I've had a lot of reading time of late."

Bucky nods, trying to picture it. Steve sitting still long enough to read.

Or was that Bucky who could never find the time and Steve who'd never pack a bag without a novel? Or spend their food money on second hand paperbacks, stick his feet under Bucky's shins as he lolled on the couch with his nose in some old, heroic fairytale-

"Speaking of hobbies. I'm here to stop somebody," Steve says quickly, "or kill them."

"Whichever comes first?" Bucky is jarred back to the present yet again, but isn't surprised in the slightest by the subject matter.

Steve looks grim and serious for the first time. He doesn’t correct the sentiment however, just begins pushing the sugar bowl around with a barely contained anger.

"I've been staying in a hotel across the park for six days. Natasha says to me 'wait here for all the use you are' and then she's taken Sam off to Mombasa," he shrugs unconvincingly, "chasing a real lead." 

"She trying to keep you out of the firing line?" Bucky asks.

"Something like that. We've got a governor in Nyeri and one in Nairobi. Both assassinated. Same method, messy," Steve blanches visibly at some recalled detail, "there could be a link here, something to do with an upcoming sustainability council, an election..."

"That's very diplomatic of you guys. Why here?" Bucky prods.

"We go where we're needed I guess," Steve doesn't meet his eyes.

"Right."

"Stateside is pretty off limits right now, for obvious, national fugitive reasons. So we're working under the radar. It's easier, actually."

"In general or in Kenya specifically?"

"Well, I- listen, It's a Super, maybe, I mean the damage," Steve shrugs, "flesh melted away, bodies just-" he makes an eloquent flapping motion like a jazz hand meant to convey some indescribable body melting horror.

Bucky blinks.

"Anyway. You hungry?" Steve asks.

"Literally all the time."

"Good."

"What did you order?"

"Goat pilau. S'good, you'll like it."

Bucky puts on an expression sadder than the one he'd given for the dead, melted politicians.

"You got some aversion there?" Steve looks torn between considering force feeding and also like he's ready to hop up and put on an apron, make whatever Bucky asks for.

"Not sure I could bring myself," Bucky says awkwardly, "I got three of my own."

"Goats?" Steve tries to look earnest, but he's a card carrying asshole so he mostly looks amused.

"Sure," Bucky says defensively, "and a little plot, a garden, _stop_. Stop laughing. What, you don't think I can take care of stubborn little bastards that don't do what they're told? It's actually a speciality of mine."

"James Buchanan Barnes," Steve says wistfully, "Goat farmer."

"I know, i know. If Hydra could see me now."

"I was thinking more the Commandos."

Bucky fake shudders.

"I know which one of those ribbings I'd come out of alive," he says, "and it ain't Hydra."

"Well, two for two," Steve laughs congenially, one step from eyes watering with suppressed humour.

The waiter is weaving back to the table with what looks like two highballs three quarter filled with water but when he sets the glasses down the scent let's Bucky know it is definitely rum. He imagines what the afternoon could be. Could he stay here in this chair for the rest of the day, forever, letting Steve Rogers and his beard and his tan make fun of his death record? Order his drinks and his food?

It's like disasociating whilst being simultaniously present in the moment. Hyperawareness, a cool palmed doctor had told him last week as she had gently removed sensors from his forehead.

But Bucky isn't in a test lab now, and yet everything is going soft at the edges, time trickling honey slow. It's the view of Freedom Park in the rain and the prospect of rum and conversation, that does it. Or maybe it’s the fact Steve has toed out of his shoes and hasn't looked over his shoulder once in ten minutes that has Bucky feeling so terrifyingly safe.

Fighting with all the breathing techniques in his arsenal, Bucky looks at Steve's feet and tries to make a joke, but his mouth doesn't even open and suddenly, the tiles have turned into wet sand, those red Shield issue boots are being dragged in a bloody arc and the weight of the body is making the arm scream in protest, the beach smells of burning-

_-his ears just about catch the sound of ships off Brighton beach, the clanking and shouting from the water, the prickling heat on his skin. Steve over all the maritime noises is calling him down to the water. He promises all sorts of cool refreshment when all Bucky wants is to sleep here cradled in the sand all day, the weight of an open paperback on his chest, _-I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth-_ well-thumbed and the only one he owns. He has nowhere to be and is drifting asleep with nothing but red burning against his closing eyelids until a chill shadow falls over his face. For the millionth time, jolting awake to Steve all yellow and assesing above him. He moves quiet, laying a shirt over Bucky's head like a bandage -you're gonna catch on fire sleeping in that sun ray- the drips of water falling off blonde hair and landing like ice on his bare chest are the coolest thing he's felt all summer, maybe in his whole life-_

"You were there," Bucky says, the sun in his eyes and the realisation equally blinding, "in Wakanda. That's how you knew."

Steve is shuffling back to take a proferred tray, chivalrous to the very end, but he ducks his head in a blushed affirmative.

"Every week or so," he admits, "I just wanted to make sure you weren't gonna disappear on me again. Or wake up alone."

He looks apologetic and Bucky takes a well timed, long sniff of the liquid, it's smooth and sweet and makes him bare his teeth. Some things are a sensory minefield. He doesn't drink any of it, but he doesn't speak either.

"It's too soon for you to be here isn't it, Jesus, are you even cleared to be out of the med bay?"

"Quit your mothering Steve. I might not remember my curfew from the 20's but I recall with perfect clarity going into missions with ice on my damn fingers. I'm ready."

"This isn't a mission, it's-" Steve sighs, "this can be whatever you want. Whatever _you_ want. How does that make you feel?"

_Completely fucking terrified pal._

"How does it make me feel? Well it's a novelty to feel, eat, walk out of a room unguarded. So yeah, the farm and the vacation mojitos are all a bit overwhelming."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't."

"Alright. Ok."

"That stuff even gonna touch you?" Bucky asks conversationally, gliding past seventy years of heartache, "I mean, you're not planning to go all Singing in the Rain on me after half a glass right?"

"Why would I sing in the rain when I could do it right here under shelter?"

"Now see, I can't tell if you're not caught up on post 1940's musicals or if it's just trademark Steve Rogers asshole sarcasm there."

"Definitely asshole sarcasm, the aforementioned category was the first thing I checked up on, you know, post thaw."

"Oh, that so? What's your favourite?"

Bucky reaches for his glass. He can feel this easy peace and the sun warming him from the mouth outwards. It's got him smiling. He brings the cold edge to his lips and watches Steve try to answer, taking the question far too serious, as usual.

The glass explodes before he gets a chance to drink. And isn’t that just typical.

He can smell sugar cane or cinder toffee and feels liquid against his hand, sticky and running down his wrist. And then the wrist starts burning. Understandably, Bucky has an adverse reaction to this kind of pain in connection with his arm, which is probably why it takes him about point of a second too long to react.

It's a tactical mistake. Sloppy and inexcusable.

By the time he looks up Steve isn't in his line of sight anymore and the tabletop is smoking, shattered glass and mulched paper littering it. On the other side, backlit as though it has come wandering out of the kitchen is a darkly dressed figure, short, slim and female, hands outstretched, eyes manic.

Bucky feels somebody behind him but, as he moves to drop from his chair to twist away a hand comes down firm on his shoulder. Leaning over him, Steve is pulling the tabletop up and, with a screech, off its base. It comes up and the attacker disappears from sight just as the whirring starts again.

With both of them shielded behind the table, it’s just the impression of heat that reaches them, so close to Bucky’s face but with that godsend of a barrier between him and the smell, vitriolic and strong.

“Acid,” Bucky mutters, “perfect.”

The ceramic starts warping, becoming impossibly translucent in front of Bucky’s face and Steve is still holding the shield with his hand gripped on a bracket that won’t be there in about ten seconds.

“Let go,” Bucky yells back over his shoulder.

He feels more than hears Steve’s _no chance,_ or more likely, just predicts it. Wasting no time in arguing, Bucky instead rolls his eyes and scoops up a discarded fork from the floor. As soon as he hears the whir-click he was waiting for he jabs Steve’s hand, lightly, with the prongs. Swearing, Steve withdraws his hand and the tabletop drops, disintegrating in on itself to the floor.

The attacker wasn’t expecting them to come out swinging -is probably not used to being on the defence when her offence is acid- which means that is exactly what Bucky does. He tips the chair back on two legs, leaning back into Steve who finally gets with the programme and braces and then Bucky kicks up and forward from the chair, landing both feet in a nice angry weight into the centre of her chest. She stumbles back, looking surprised, but before she gets the chance to raise her hands Bucky is swiping at the half masked face with the fork.

They trade a few blows, during which Bucky is glad to see Steve, barefoot, rather forcefully clearing a group of remaining diners from the scene. Bucky keeps up the distraction. The blunt little fork is his new favourite thing in the world, and he is sure that together they break skin a couple of times. The force of one punch to his empty shoulder however is, embarrassingly, enough to have Bucky knocked back hard against the outside bar and going down gasping. The time in cryo hasn’t affected his reactions, never did, but the down-time after has him feeling weaker, tiring faster, off balance.

A few weeks of recon in a town full of sports bars hasn’t stunted Steve apparently, as he flies out of nowhere to lay a parry of moves that almost leaves Bucky wincing in sympathy. It seems simultaneously lifetimes ago he was in a fight and just yesterday that Steve’s knees were doing _that_ to his sternum. Their opponent is quick though, dodges fast and gets Steve’s legs out from under him. Bucky is moving across the terrace before he even hits the floor but the hand coming down onto Steve’s chest is fast.

The sound is horrible, a combination of sizzling meat and a low, distressed moan of pain.

“There are others in place,” she starts her pre-requisite monologue with the usual glee and in a hissed South African accent, accompanied by the spluttering hiss of the acid at her fingertips, “everywhere. At the port, at the embassy with your friend in Mombasa. You can’t watch everywh-”

Bucky kicks the assailant in the head, hard, and although she rocks to the side it doesn’t dislodge her. Bucky is weighing up the little promise he made to himself not to kill anything ever again and pitting that condition against the image of Steve’s ribcage melting. Although that’s not even a _question,_ the millisecond of pause gives Bucky just enough time to spot the lines. There are two of them, just visible as a bright green streak against her skin at the cuff of the sleeve, disappearing on the inside of shirt and then apparent where they protrude the fabric up the arm.

Taking stock, Bucky shifts his weight and inexplicably thinks _-one arm one fork keep moving-_ as he brings the little instrument down in an arc.

Miraculously, the combined desperation and faith behind the dull fork prongs slash the line tubing clean through and find a new home in a soft bicep.

The cut releases an arc of acid like a twisted catherine wheel, catching Bucky all up the side of the leg that he doesn’t quite twist out the way in time. He shouts with surprise at the dull, hot pain of it and on instinct, lashes forward as he turns his head away. Fist meets flesh and he can’t see what he’s hit but the winded grunt and crunch suggests, hopefully, throat.

Blinking away the tears automatically springing up against the acerbic substance, Bucky looks back to see Steve on his feet, a little unsteady but a lot pissed with his shoulders squared and fists clenched. His shirt is doing a really good job of staying on his body in tatters and Bucky is busy looking at his half exposed shoulder, the skin there is golden in places but an angry, split-skin red too. Bucky is wistfully missing that time, five whole minutes ago, when everything was quiet and they were in more danger of sun burn than third degree ones.

Steve turns back to speak to Bucky as the relentless, acid spewing, day ruining menace stands too.

“Oh for-“ Steve kicks a wicker chair at her knees but she laughs, sidesteps it.

She pulls the tubes out of the sleeve and rips off the connected gloves. When there is no more to pull she reaches back and snatches what looks essentially like a soda bottle of viscous green liquid from a discreet backpack.

She holds it high, triumph written in her eyes.

Just in time to hear something that sound like _catch_ Bucky watches as Steve goes diving forward into a roll and away from them, out the terrace door. Because he’s a hero and a shoeless idiot. The woman looks torn between the two of them for long enough that, once she makes the decision to chase after her primary target, Bucky is already hot on her heels.

The route leads them to the market and Bucky might wonder at the stupidity of luring this acid-armed assailant into the most densely populated part of town, but he knows better. Knows Steve better, somehow, to be precise. He needs to complete the mission, get to the port to neutralise any further potential threat. Steve is putting himself at risk, turning his back to the enemy, but just like in the hills of Europe, he’s trusting Bucky to keep this situation in check. While he might be a long way from a comfy snipers perch and a rifle, both Bucky and Steve know without a doubt that Bucky won’t let that bottle fly for a second. Not on his watch.

Now that he knows it exists, the backpack is as good a target as any to aim for and, lashing forward, he snakes his arm between the weight of it and the woman’s body, pulling her back against himself and driving his knee into the back of hers. She crumples down backwards but he’s got her, spins her to land face down onto the cement floor and whips the bag off in one movement.

He kicks the bottle of acid away from the pinned, snarling, would-be-assassin and keeps his boot planted firmly in her back. _Not bad,_ he thinks, _for a one armed, one hundred year old veteran._ He thinks maybe he spoke too soon as he has to use his teeth to steady and unzip the backpack. There’s no more acid, thankfully, but there’s another empty bottle, crumpled paper and a gun nestled like a nice little gift at the bottom of the bag.

Bucky has the safety off and the muzzle pressed snugly up against the top of the woman’s spine before he can take his next breath.

 

ii.

 

 _‘There had to be the dark & muddy waters so that the sun could have _  
something to background its flashing glory.’ – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,  
Betty Smith

 

Bucky catches up to Steve at the end of the main market street in time to see him wind through a gap between two stalls. He copies the motion with an off kilter kind of grace, breathing in a slap to the face stench of salty fish as he traverses a crate of flat, glassy eyed bodies on ice.

Everything is dark for a millisecond before he bursts through a clothes line and is momentarily thrown off. Blinking in the sudden sun, Bucky senses the drop and halts with his toes digging into the ground like a cartoon character and only then feels the grip on the back of his shirt. It's the only thing keeping him from teetering forward off of the harbour wall.

It's not a long fall -he's jumped from higher, looked down a scope from further- but it's the sudden hit of cold rain like snow against his face that does it, the glimpse of Steve's big, steady outstretched hand in his peripheral. Reaching.

"Woah," Bucky says, dumbly.

"Yeah."

If they weren't running for their lives it'd be a beautiful thing to behold; the lake, the mountains, storm clouds, the crescents of boats arcing from the water that's all torn up by the rain. Bucky would be madder about it, the bad timing, but isn't that the way they've caught every glimpse of something beautiful their whole lives? Stolen, out of breath and at the wrong damn time.

The water hyacinth are in full bloom, thickly spread on the surface of the water and so vibrantly green thanks to the downpour that the whole of Lake Victoria appears to be one giant, lush, shaggy carpet.

Bucky can see Steve's gears turning, looking back to the port and then to the water, hair flicking in his eyes as his head whips between the two. _Fight or flight_ aren't really in the Steve Rogers playbook, it's more like _run fighting or fight running._ Bucky will just follow. Ad nauseam, rinse and repeat.

"I wouldn't recommend trying to walk on that Saint Steven," Bucky yells over the sound of the rain.

"Water looks good."

"Well it ain't the Hudson at least."

A commotion behind them alerts Bucky to the oncoming threat. He side steps imperceptibly in front of Steve, who moves with him, shifting them behind a boat.

"-too clean," Steve is saying with a stupid grin just in time for a massive shower of splinters to come flying from the mast by his head. The shot seems to ring out a second later.

Bucky sees the raised gun from across the street, the woman’s demented eyes. He looks down at his outstretched hand where he is mid-pass to Steve, the bottle of acid and the six bullets pulled from the gun uselessly clutched in his fist.

 _Is she made of pockets?_ He thinks, furious at her but mostly himself. He, who used to have ammo in the soles of his shoes once upon a horrible time.

A car passes between them, wipers on full effect. Then they meet eyes, the assassin and the ex-assassin, and it’s a horrible, begrudging feeling of respect and inevitability that rises in Bucky as he sees her eyes flick down to clock the bottle in his hand, the nose of her gun coming up in slow, dreadful motion.

She might be a quick shot, who knows, but Bucky will always be faster.

He has just about time to pitch a throw that he’d make some quip about, except they’re probably about to die and he doesn’t have that kind of time. And besides, he wouldn’t want to let Steve down one last time by fucking up another baseball reference before they go.

The mere suggestion of heat in the rain is suddenly a shower of boiling shards of glass on skin. The woman’s wailing scream is horrible and in instinct, Bucky tries to pull up the arm, out and around them, but with a phantom tug he remembers. Steve twists into the space too, like he's trying to bring up the shield, but they are weaponless and entirely without defences and stupid, totally stupid.

Muscle memory has got him this far, it might as well be the thing that kills him.

Bucky gets enough of a look at the body curling in around him to know that, if he’s done for, then this is it for real, no complaints. The arms coming up around him just like a hundred easy embraces, the burning holes in the white linen, the blood beneath, the sickly smell of acid and burning flesh but underneath that somewhere is day old sweat and sugarcane, a nutty soap he doesn’t recognise.

And then Bucky’s hand that might as well have been flailing for seventy three years finds its home, catching in a gathered bunch of material. There's one breath huffed out right in his ear that is louder than the gargling screaming backing track from across the street and then his feet just aren't under him anymore.

They hit the water at the same time, hands on each other. Part push, part pull, all fall. For a lake in an African summer storm it is cold as hell and Bucky tries not to panic. He goes completely blank to everything but the crush of his lungs, the trailing plants caught round his feet and the scrabbling terror of having no free hand for purchase.

Most of all it's the Steve shaped anvil weight on top of him that shuts Bucky down, sends his thinking brain scurrying off to the dark, still place. He pushes against Steve's chest uselessly, tries to open his eyes against the black push of water and fails, opens his mouth liked a moron to speak, to say-

 

_"-patron saint of headaches sounds about right."_

_"What?"_

_Bucky flips the book around, points at an old man depicted with a shining gold disc about his head. Steve wonders how they get the colour like that, it's the exact colour of the light on the brick out of the apartment window, the tulips in the frowning old woman’s hat in front, the colour of his mother’s hair..._

_"You're dozing in church now?"_

_"Bucky," Steve shifts in his seat, the homily is long today, the voice soporific, "what are you talking about?"_

_"It's you," Bucky jabs at the illustration again, a little smudge of dirt from his finger landing on the page at the same time he twists to smile angelically at their neighbouring pew, "I'm so sorry, ma’am, my friend can't read."_

_The elderly woman who'd been shushing them looks utterly charmed._

_"He's had a rough time of it, look at that beard," Bucky goes on._

_“That explains the headaches,” Steve hisses, as he tries to clean the smudge off the bible in vain._

_“The beard?”_

_“The rough time.”_

_"Huh, I think it's everyone else who gets an ache in the skull around those saintly types, always cleanings up their messes, getting them out of fights. They're the true heroes."_

_"I’m pretty sure you're namesake was canonised too pal, I don't know why you're acting like troublemaking is so beneath you when you're in those alleys just as much as me, blood on your knuckles."_

_"Patron saint of winning, that's me. And that's the difference, Saint James the Fighter."_

_"That's not it stupid, it's James the Great."_

_As if summoned, there's that grin. It's too wild and too sure for church, Bucky knows that. Steve puts his hand over his mouth even though Bucky isn't saying anything. His reply is right there in the twist of his lips against Steve's palm though, the pleased little noise muffled there. Steve digs his elbow meanly into Bucky's thigh and then gasps as Bucky swats at his hand with the heavy bible. Free once more, Bucky opens his mouth to whisper._

_"I can't breathe you son of-_

 

“Great- time for a _nap_ ,” Bucky says after he’s done expelling half of Lake Victoria from his airways.

It comes out as a sort of non-syllabic, wet growl but Steve, who’s still got his crossed palms pressing into Bucky’s sternum, well, Steve looks mighty pleased with himself. Or maybe he’s just happy Bucky is breathing again. Either way, Bucky hopes he coughed dirty lake water right into his mouth.

“Technically, it was your turn,” Steve says without heat.

His hand slides round and down onto Bucky’s side and back. He starts rubbing soothing but firm circles and Bucky’s entire lungs shiver gratefully in response until he coughs one last time before groaning and rolling to his knees.

“I did the Potomac idiot.”

Steve is still steadying him with an outstretched hand but he doesn’t look like he’s holding himself up all that securely himself. He’s smiling anyway with his face half covered in beard and half covered in blood.

“And I did the Wien,” he grins painfully, “’s ok, I’ll shout for this one but the next two are on you. Jeez, ok. I have to call Natasha, I have to go-”

“Don’t,” Bucky detangles a reed from where it’s all twisted up round his foot, wincing at the spark of pain it shoots up his leg, “don’t bother, there’s no danger there. She’s a lone wolf, organised yes, but scatty, with a backpack full of plane and bus tickets: Johannesburg, Nairobi, Nyeri, Kisumu. Threat’s over for now.”

“We can’t be sure she’s neutralised.”

“She’s dead. She was right beneath it when it blew and look at us,” Bucky grimaces, reaches to touch feather light at a burn already healing far too close to Steve’s left eye, “barely made it out with our good looks. Trust me, _that_ was a death scream.”

Steve looks torn up both physically and figuratively. Bucky sympathises and agrees, it’s a waste of life and probably information, but it’s not a choice when it’s anyone else or Steve. Killing veto promise or no promise. _Technically, the acid killed her,_ he tries to self-reason.

“Somebody must’ve sent her though,” Steve doesn’t seem convinced, but his tone is resigned and tired with an edge of pain, “she’s come from some cell or government surely. Hell, maybe she’s even from another damn planet.”

“Not everything has an alien association you know. Sometimes political fuckwits get their hands on a super soaker full of acid.”

“That’s fair, that’s,” Steve stands up and, honestly, he looks like he’s just kicked his way out of a wet shredder, “ok. I’ll call it in as soon as we’re someplace secure. We need a ride.”

“You should take off your shirt,” Bucky, who’s been trying in frustration to free his soaking wet phone from his soaking wet pocket for the last minute, says, “I’m just saying.”

“To flag down a ride?”

“No, egomaniac,” Bucky waves the liberated phone, “I’m calling in a ride, you need to get that acid away from your skin. It genuinely smells like you’re still cooking.”

“Feels like it,” Steve grumbles, tugging at the shirt like a grumpy child covered in icecream.

He is right, although his skin is healing over quickly, he took the worst of the exposure and new red welts are appearing just as fast as they’re disappearing. Bucky’s leg feels the same, but he isn’t about to be trying to get himself naked on a public roadside. There’s enough compromising shit of him on the internet, no need to add public indecency up there next to mass murder.

“Take off your shirt idiot,” Bucky lies back against the damp grass and averts his gaze up at the sky, waiting, “and come home with me.”

Eventually, after some pretty half assed pacing, Bucky feels Steve drop down next to him on the grass. Bucky doesn’t look to see if the tattered remains of the shirt have exited the scene, but from the heat radiating off of the shoulder bumping his own, he guesses itmust be so. Steve exhales a long low breath.

Bucky closes his eyes tight.

The jet lands on the lake. Of course. It’s almost silent and Bucky doubts regular ears would pick it up. He and Steve are instantly alert.

Bucky wants to kiss the Dora Milaje that help Steve to his feet and into a reclined seat on the plane. He props himself up and talks to them in a low voice, watching Steve doze and the flesh knit itself over his collarbones and up his throat. When he finally can’t stand on the leg anymore, Bucky slips into the opposite seat and turns his head to the window.

The movement jogs Steve awake and although he isn’t looking, Bucky feels those eyes on him.

"Three planes crashed into this lake in the war you know," Bucky says into the glass.

"Who told you that?"

"Somebody on the ride over."

"Well that's comforting," Steve yawns into the sentence.

Bucky follows suit, like he always does, but his jaw cracks.

"Hey, I'm gonna let you take first watch buddy, so don't go dropping us into the water. " he mumbles, forehead on the window and eyes closed, legs stretched out and between Steve's, curled shin over ankle in the little space between them, “you've already aced the diving part of the decathlon today. And, besides, this Lake's seen enough."

Steve must let Bucky sleep, probably smiling at the quick abandonment off consciousness, the slouch of his body curled small against the curved wall, his knowledge of aviation disasters and terrible timing, his head bumped into the window and the steady, fogging huff of breath there.

"Hey," Steve pats Bucky on the knee, "hey, Buck-"

One eye opens, and there's a look there that's all predator, caution and beautiful, stealthy precision. The mistrust softens into a regular, questioning glare soon enough.

_Did they tell you about it? Were you awake when I went down because I wouldn't have left you alone if I'd known, I'm so sorry. Did they let you remember? Did you try? I hope you didn't fight too long and let it be in my name, I hope you've forgotten all of it now. Even if it meant forgetting me, I'd trade that in a second to take away every single year that taught you this look in your eyes, because that isn't a look from the war I remember, so where did you learn it? I'm sorry. Is it something I can take away from you? Would the separation hurt you even-_

"-picture punk, it'll last longer."

"I'm sorry," Steve shakes his head, dislodging the ice from his brain, the guilt, "I’m so sorry. I just wanted to say-"

Bucky waits, head cocked and face blank.

"-that it's all track and field in a decathlon dummy. Nothing dramatic. No diving."

"Huh. No shooting?" Bucky sounds sarcastic, but his face is relieved, as though he could read Steve's scattered thoughts and was worried, like Steve himself, that the plane wouldn't be able to survive him releasing them. It’s true he might start and never stop, let the scream rip through every part of the jet as he bares his soul and takes no prisoners. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, he would say inevitably, indefinitely. And they might be living forever but they don’t have that kind of time.

"No shooting," he says instead, "just fields."

"The title of the better half of my memoir," Bucky says with an off kilter grin, closing his eyes once more.

 

iii.

 

_“Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you.” – The History of Love, Nicole Krauss_

 

They catch their breath at the same time. It’s impressive, the physical synchronicity born from years in the making that no time, no ice, no torture or distance can interrupt.

It’s a high hill to climb, but they make it. And the reward is spectacular.

“You like it?”

Steve is about ten minutes clear of a brutal decontamination shower, a thorough med check and a hill climb, but he manages what looks like a warm, if tired, smile as he looks down at the view.

“I love it.”

“Yeah?”

Bucky has only been here himself for a week or so, delighted initially to be out of the bustle and attention of the main city. This is the closest he’s ever felt to coming home though, he thinks, and then looks up at Steve’s face and mentally amends that.

“Really?”

“Sure. I like it better than the sad place in Bucharest."

"Hey man, don't devalue my autonomy. That was my place."

"It was sad."

"Right. It was when you showed up and all the punching and cinder block throwing started messing with the decor. Real sad, Steve, a fucking tragedy."

"Concrete shelving? Newspaper curtains? Please, Bucky, Cold War Russia called and they want their interior design scheme back."

Bucky tips his head back and laughs into the rain.

"Cold War Russia called and they want _me_ back buddy, that should be your top priority."

"It should've definitely been my punch line."

Bucky slings his arm round Steve’s shoulder and begins steering them both forward and across the field, the fine rain driving him instinctively towards the shelter awaiting.

"You'll get it next time champ."

His animals must have been ushered into the little covered pen and out of the grim weather by one of the more sympathetic farmers, Bucky thinks gratefully as he takes stock of the field and the closed doors. The little things will be angry with him in the morning, headbutting and more stubborn than usual somehow.

His accommodation is earthy, simple and solitary. It's a blank canvas. Private. Perfect for all the messy colours of his mind and nightmares to spill all over. He can sit in silence all day if he likes, can scream all night and disrupt no one. There’s the lake opposite and a few more structures in the field, but they stand empty at this time of evening, the kids and farmers that use the space during the hot working days have long since vacated, moving back towards the city and their families.

Bucky is happily, tragically, peacefully alone here.

It’s exactly as this thought enters his mind that Steve kisses him, just leans in slow and brings a hand up to cup his jaw.

“Oh,” Bucky says against his mouth.

“Yeah.”

“Of course,” Bucky nudges their noses together, “no, of course.”

And Steve is moving them back then through the light fabric over the doorway and out of the rain, moving Bucky through sheer suggestion and the warm, slow pressure of his mouth. It’s perfect, except, Bucky can’t, he just _can’t_ be led backwards into a dark room without scoping it out first. He breaks away.

“Hold on.”

It’s a simple little space, nothing personal on the wall, but the artifacts and décor are interesting and complexly crafted. Everything here is steeped in such beauty, tradition and warmth that it helps make the room feel like a house, like a history he is welcome to observe even though he doesn’t share it. A home even though he’s just a lodger. He checks the little kitchen, his sightline out the back window towards the pen and the out-hut and the dark space between the simple cot and the floor.

It’s easy to feel unashamed checking for monsters under the bed when you used to be one yourself.

Steve seems to understand, keeps one of his hands low and grounding against Bucky’s back. He doesn’t comment or offer to help, but he does steps away from where he’s blocking the doorway. This paranoid sweep of the room takes about five seconds and Steve doesn’t break contact or move out of reach from where his fingers are doing God’s work against the eternal ache in Bucky’s spine.

“Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Do you hate it?”

“I hate that I hate something else about myself, yknow? I hate that everything takes longer and I can’t sleep on my left or tie my own stupid hair,” Bucky considers, steams on, “can’t do some of the things I wanna do to you right now.”

“You’re an adaptable kind of guy, I have every faith in you.”

“Gee thanks,” Bucky hooks his arm easily up around Steve’s shoulders again, closer than outside and face to face rather than side by side which just seems like a naturalprogression, “I just wish I could have faith that it’ll get easier. This arm, this head, me, all of it.”

“Dark before the dawn and all that.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky is shaking a little now, all that pent up emotion banging against the carefully locked gates, “sometimes it just gets to be easy.”

“Does it?”

“It has to.”

“I have nearly a century of anecdotal proof that suggests otherwise pal.”

“It *has* to,” he draws Steve closer by the back of his neck, fingers digging in hard, “what the hell happened to my optimistic guy huh?”

“Oh please, faith and optimism are two very different things.”

“You’re saying there’s no point in fighting for something?” Bucky leans heavier into the tentative hands on his waist so Steve knows he means it, “careful, they might take your Captaincy away with that kind of talk.”

“Let them. I didn’t earn it,” Steve looks the morose kind of glum that Bucky might’ve taken the piss out of, but he’s struck silent now, “didn’t earn anything I ever got to keep.”

Bucky gets it then, relaxes his hold a fraction just to tighten it, bump their heads together.

“You get to keep me.”

“Buck-“

“Shut up. Listen, as much as you’re fighting this in your head as I’m saying it. You get to keep me this time all right? Right here if you want, in the middle of a field somewhere we never thought we’d be, back in New York, on the freaking moon. Whatever.”

Steve closes his eyes, he looks pissed off and reluctantly hopeful. Optimism is battling to the surface on all the features of his face and Bucky wants to put his fingers and his mouth against every part of what he’s looking at in a way that is both everything and nothing to do with desire.

He finds he doesn’t have to lean very far to press a close mouthed, bump of his lips up against Steve’s temple, the thin skin over his tired closed left eye and then the right. It’s less a series of kisses and more of a timid knock on a door: _let me in. Let me in there so I can see what you’re seeing and what you’re tired of seeing so I can show you something else._

Steve mumbles something too low to hear.

“What’s that?”

“You’re not.”

“Not what?”

“S’mthing to keep.”

Bucky smiles despite himself.

“I’ve got seventy years of anecdotal proof that suggests otherwise pal-”

Steve doesn’t admonish him for joking about it. They learnt that lesson together in the school of trench warfare and poverty line living. When you’re surprised to wake up every day, let alone waking up to the sight of the same face you never expected to see again, you learn fast that every part of yourself and that face, the person attached to it, is an easy target for gallows humour. Survivorship is only funny to survivors, because what’s the reward for making it through hell if not the licence to own it, *re-own* it and yourself and your words again.

“-just no ice baths. Ok?”

Steve looks relieved, cracks a wonky smile.

“We’ll make a list.”

“That sounded far kinkier than you wanted it to.”

“Did it though?”

“God. Where exactly are you gonna keep that list, pinned to the fridge in every safe house this side of the Atlantic?”

“It’s going to have to be, I don’t imagine my desk still exists at HQ,” Steve laments sarcastically.

"You had a desk?"

"Yeah, well I guess they thought I should have a filing system for all those jurisdictional laws I liked to break."

Bucky is nodding thoughtfully.

"You have a picture of me on it?"

"Sure sweetheart.”

“In a frame?”

“In a thick manila envelope. And that was filed away under laws I like to break, weren't you listening?"

“I literally haven’t heard a word since your shirt came off in the market.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Steve says and kisses him like it’s the answer to a question Bucky can’t remember asking.

It’s so easy to lean into it, to abandon himself to this one point of focus.

Bucky feels so intent and rapt on it that, when Steve pulls away as soon as Bucky’s back hits the wall, he has to remind himself about his reformed violence pact.

"What," he growls, brisk and annoyed, "are you waiting for? Permission? A password? A doctors certificate?"

Steve runs what is presumably both a subconscious and soothing hand up Bucky's side but he frowns off to the side.

"Is it bad if I say all of those things might make me feel better about it?"

Bucky considers, rubbing his eyes tiredly and tilting his head into his palm. He looks like the Thinker. He feels like the over thinking idiot.

"Well," he sighs, "I speak from joint experience here when I say that many doctors have given permission for things that probably shouldn't be done-"

"And here we are?"

"And here we are.”

“I just want to be sure it’s the right thing to do.”

“Of course you do. Just, let go of me for a second, maybe,” Bucky sighs, he feels waspish and mad, “maybe this is a selfish thing to do.”

“Oh,” Steve, who not only took hands off Bucky at his request but stepped back two paces, looks disheartened, “that’s not what I was hoping you’d- I don’t care what people think.”

“No, not them, us, me.”

“What?”

“Well,” Bucky tips his head back against the wall that Steve had been busy crowding him up against a moment before, “what if I’m just using you to feel something good?”

“That’s ok.”

“Is it?” Bucky feels cold even as he says it, cold and disassociated from his own words, “or what if I’m just trying to get you to jog some memory in me? Some kind of physical trigger or something.”

“Well that sounds,” Steve shifts his weight, he clears his throat looking utterly punctured, Bucky feels sick just looking at him, “pretty, um, rational. So, you mean you don’t remember it?”

It’s a stab directly to the aorta, the way Steve looks up at him, all hopeful and tragic. Bucky wants to deny it, feel blameless and whole and not like this, not shaking and messed up and so sorry he could die from it.

More than anything, he wants to pull Steve back in by the throat and kiss all the words back out of his mouth, back track it all to the part where he could feel the thrum of his pulse under his thumb, the scratch of his beard on his chin. But, because Bucky was made to fall into Steve Rogers orbit and then methodically unmade just to hurt, so he readjusts the angle and follows through with the hit.

“Do you remember your first Christmas?”

“No, but-“

“Right. But you know how it must’ve been? You heard the stories, followed the traditions for years to come, maybe get a bit weepy when you smell candle wax and oranges but don’t really remember why? That’s it. Everything is fragments and second hand. A whole life gleaned from photographs and nothing really, in here, is mine.”

“Jesus Bucky.”

“I only got enough real, full memories that I can count on this one hand. The ones I trust enough to be real that is. I can’t,” he takes a steadying breath, which doesn’t really steady anything, “I just can’t connect all these things and then there’s _you_ and you’re so… so goddamn bright it just bleaches everything else out of the memory. Like a blast site. _But I don’t remember._ ”

“I can help you, if you’ll just let-”

Bucky doesn’t let him finish his sentence, he knows the loving tender direction that train is going in and refuses to get on it. Not this time.

“Yeah I bet you wanna help," he bites out, "and what about you, isn’t this selfish of you?”

Steve looks a little like he did the day Bucky put four bullets in him.

“Stop. Stop trying to push me away.”

“-aren’t you just as guilty? Trying to, what, make it right? Here you are, giving up everything you could be just to make up for the death of one man. God I’m jealous of you, if I could have my slate wiped just by fucking some ghost-”

It really is something to behold when the heat of Steve’s anger is really focussed in, that little war with control behind his eyes, like the safety coming off. Bucky can feel it rattling his teeth as Steve, with a controlled force, slams him back an inch into the wall. It doesn’t hurt, wouldn’t ordinarily be enough to shut him up if it wasn’t for the way Steve moves in with the push, gets himself right up in Bucky’s space.

“It isn’t him,” Bucky says viciously, smiling like a knife wound, bringing his hand up to –what? Not defend himself, not to hurt Steve- just to fight.

With the patience of a mother leading a child from the tracks edge, Steve catches Bucky’s hand and turns him into the wall, back to chest. He doesn’t even have to say anything and all the anger just dissipates. Bucky wilts back into him, feeling both pathetic and grateful.

“It isn’t him, it isn’t him,” he keeps saying, and at first it’s a warning, the way you might shout _run for your life!_ but towards the end, with Steve laying his forehead against the back of Bucky’s neck and his arm coming up around his heaving chest, Bucky is just saying sorry, sorry, sorry into the words.

“I know, I know, it's ok" Steve whispers into Bucky’s hair, “you said yourself why can’t it just be easy. Well why can’t I just want you like it’s the first time I’ve seen you?”

“I don’t know,” his voice is as small as he feels, “can you?”

Despite the ever dropping tension in the room, there’s a playfulness in Steve’s voice when he speaks.

“What do you think?”

The way Steve is pushing himself against Bucky’s body it is pretty clear what he means. It’s a persuasive point, he thinks, noting how comfortably held but free he feels, how focussed the animal part of his brain is on the feel of Steve's hips, the broad chest he's able to shove back into.

“I’m not about to put words into your mouth,” Bucky says, still angry but deflated, leaning back, “I’m like, a really big advocate of equal agency y’know.”

“I want this, if you do.”

“Yeah.”

"But I'm walking out of that door if this is the last time you want me touch you. Got it?"

"Yeah."

“Yes?”

“Yes. Yes in about eighteen fucking languages you insufferably moral asshole.”

“Loud and clear. I want anything, we can-” Steve hooks a hand under Bucky’s chin to tilt his face round, to look him right in the eyes, “we can just lay here and sleep for the next twelve hours if that’s where this is going.”

“Please, please keep up that level of dirty talk,” Bucky sighs, turning into the circle of Steve’s arms, “God that sounds amazing.”

“Sleep. And no night terrors. Not even dreams, not one, and *coffee* in the morning.”

“Oh Christ, don’t stop.”

It’s ridiculous, foreplay parading as reluctance parading as foreplay and it must just be the tangled fucked up way they operate, whether it’s joking about killing in the bedroom or joking about sex in the battlefield. This is just another arena for their bullshit to cover up the serious feelings; hands all over each other and mouths saying the exact opposite.

They’re laughing like it’s a joke and Steve is running his hands up Bucky’s back, bunching up his shirt and saying something about whether or not you can make pancakes from goats milk. He’s got a little dimple of mischief appearing in his left cheek when he says he _can sleep outside_ and that’s the moment Bucky knows he is absolutely, definitely going to fuck him.

Steve tips Bucky gently back onto the small cot and proceeds to comprehensively take him apart. Which seems rude, given that Bucky has brain damage and near on a centuries worth of forgetfulness and so it’s really hard to remember his name at the best of times, let alone when there is a hand working dents into his hips and a mouth following behind.

Because he is trained to identify and expose points of weakness, Steve lays kisses that sooth the skin and simultaneously make Bucky feel as though he’s still burning. Maybe he is. Maybe they both are. If the whole field was on fire, it’s doubtful either of them would be smart enough to leave this bed in time.

Increasingly worried about his own sanity as he usually is, Bucky decides he is jealous of his own ribcage as he watches Steve lick a path down it.

“Cmere” he grumbles eloquently, grabbing at his head and pulling that mouth back up to him.

Despite being grabbed by the ear and hauled up the bed, Steve goes willingly and without comment but is definitely laughing at him into the kiss, Bucky can tell in the little gasps of breath which he greedily swallows as he brings up his knees to pull him tighter in, grabs at the back of his neck, licks into his mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Steve urges him, shaking his head and knocking their noses together awkwardly, “don’t.”

“Ok.”

They are a mess, no two ways about it, there is no pace and no order to the way they are pawing at each other. Bucky goes after Steve’s lips like oxygen. Filthy one moment and just shared breaths the next, wordless jokes between them and then darker, softer things spoken into the stroke of Steve’s hands against his hair, the desperate rock of hips, the nails digging into the flesh of Steve’s shoulder.

Outrageously, despite somehow stripping Bucky in two seconds flat, Steve is still wearing the clothes from the med bay, some kind of loose tunic-like scrubs. They are a little baggy and devastatingly blue. Bucky tries to prop himself up and shove at the hem, which is difficult because there isn’t a millimetre of daylight between them.

“Take-”

“What?” Steve huffs out into his ear, sounding sincerely concerned even as he bites at Bucky’s earlobe.

“Take-” he tries again, gasps, “this. Take, Jesus, take whatever you want, just-”

He throws himself back into the pillow and just flings his arm over his eyes, but then it’s too much to even think about and the imagining is worse, so he looks again. He moves his hand just in time for Steve to put their fingers together. He pulls Bucky’s hand away from his face and is looking at him like he’s a particularly easy problem to solve, a little amused and a lot resolved.

They don’t breathe for a minute. Bucky is perhaps less worried about his lungs exploding and dying right here than he should be. They don’t even speak which is, frankly, absurd. Instead they just look at each other as Steve gently places the back of Bucky’s hand to the bed, untangles their fingers and moves down to hold his wrist.

His grip is feather light, gentle and then decidedly less so.

“All right?”

“Yeah. I mean, there’s not a single part of me that should be able to find being pinned down sexy,” Bucky observes.

Steve raises an eyebrow. _And yet?_

Bucky nods, faux-reluctant.

“And yet,” he agrees.

Bucky kisses him first this time, simply and chastely, straining up against the un-budging hold to do so.

“Please take off your clothes,” he says sweetly, “you idiot.”

The technology in Wakanda is insane, as was the science in a Brooklyn basement in 1943, but neither can match Steve Roger’s sheer dumb luck in a fight. The combined results of all three are evident as Steve lands back on the bed, sans shirt. His skin is baby pink and tender looking in places all up his chest and neck and around the bandages, but Bucky would bet a hundred dollars he doesn’t own that he’s healed under there too. There's the darkest, worst part of the burns like a star over his heart.

“Does it hurt?”

Reaching up, Bucky runs his forefinger down from Steve’s throat, across a red slash on his collarbone, all the way to his stomach and hips. He looks up, expectant, but Steve has his eyes closed, nostrils flared, his head bowed down between where he’s holding himself up over Bucky.

“I live for the day we don’t ask each other that,” Steve grins shakily.

“But then what would I think about every second of the day?”

Steve provides him with a pretty good answer by moving down the bed and taking Bucky into his mouth.

“Ok,” Bucky exhales, “that’s, yeah.”

He keeps his hand heroically still in the sheets, can feel the phantom grip of Steve’s hand there even as he can feel his actual fingers curled around the length of him. The other hand is alternating frantically between holding Bucky down with the palm flat on his stomach and then pushing at his thighs, nail scratching hard as he moves Bucky’s leg out to the side.

Predictably, Bucky can’t move fast enough to make space for Steve between legs. He has to remember not to employ any muscle memory reactions when the pressure of Steve’s mouth changes, like when he feels how warm and open his throat is -for _him_ \- Bucky has to stop his body from sending any neck snapping message down to his wobbly legs.

The pressure builds like nothing Bucky has ever felt before. And just maybe, he thinks, watching Steve take a breath and absently kiss at his thighs, gasp and put his wet mouth and sharp teeth against the underside of Bucky’s damn _knee,_ that there might be something in this second chance at first memories business.

The thought makes him laugh in more of a breathless pant. Steve flicks his eyes up and they look black to Bucky. He shudders embarrassingly.

“What are you thinking about?”

Bucky tries to find his voice, spends a further few heartbeats just scrabbling around for words.

“Small victories.”

Steve inclines his head in an amused nod, a few strands of hair falling forward into his eyes. Bucky is sitting up and pushing it back before he even realises he’s told his body to move.

He feels like he is trying to punch underwater as he runs his hand through Steve’s hair, gets a good grip in it at the nape of his neck and, ever so slowly, tips his head back.

Steve, with his throat bared and eyes back to blue, smiles at Bucky. It’s not a _good shot_ smile or a _do your worst_ smile, in fact he might never have seen it before. The reality of that scenario is yet to occur to him, that this might be one whole new memory that’s just theirs. The weight of it hits Bucky like a building to the chest and he tries not to shake as he leans in to kiss at Steve’s throat, at the part where his beard smooths away to just bare, new skin, to suck ever so gently at the part of him that has all his blood and breath safely in.

Bucky likes to imagine he can feel both of those things stuttering under his lips.

They are sitting with the sheets all pooled around their waists and it’s nice, to be so close and still be up where the cool air from the doorway and the refreshing afterthought of rain can reach them. Steve shifts them in closer, legs tangling, with his hands low on Bucky’s hips; he can’t seem to stop skittering his hands, up the length of the arm holding his head still, down Bucky’s back, pushing against his chest, testing the give. He is falling apart under the ministrations of Bucky’s lips against his pulse point, which seems like adequate revenge for what a writhing wreck his own mouth was able to reduce somebody to.

Somebody used to holding one position for hours, days on end too. Discipline be damned.

“Can I?”

“Yes,” Steve says before the question is asked, before the thought has even finished formulating.

What’s surprising is just how much Bucky wants it, given that it isn’t something he's thought about, let alone knows how to want. Not until the moment he got Steve dragged into this country on an invisible jet, let him shove him around a little bit in his own house and then hold him together while he railed and yelled against the world.

It’s awkward, wasn’t ever going to be anything but, and the daily ache of pain in the missing parts of his arm won’t be thanking him in the morning. But they make it work, laid stretched out on their sides. Bucky nearly cries when Steve bites into his mouth, working Bucky over with his hand all sure and tight and as he squirms in pleasure the whole left side of his torso grinds into the bed. It’s like rolling around on shingle and so when Steve, mid-kiss, pulls back to slide a pillow underneath him, Bucky can’t do anything but reach out for the scrubs hanging low on Steve’s waist.

“You ok?” Bucky gasps stupidly against his cheek, landing wet kisses basically anywhere in range.

Steve, in a feat of grace, manages to divest himself, and them, of all clothing and sheets and then it’s nothing but over flushed skin and the pulse Bucky can feel in his _toes_ as they push up against each other.

“Hey,” Bucky says, trying to get Steve to look up from where his face is tilted into the pillow, “hey.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I miss you.”

Steve laughs a little wild, fingers dragging and playing against where Bucky's ribcage is that much more prominent after a good year of nothing but sleep.

“That right?”

“Yeah,” Bucky is clawing back at Steve’s chest like he’s trying to physically climb inside all of that new skin, the responding broken moan enough to flip his heart right over, “you never kiss me anymore.”

“What a jerk.”

He gets about a breath away from Steve’s mouth and then he’s stopped, watching probably a little cross eyed as Steve retreats enough to put his hand against Bucky’s jaw instead.

He feels himself being rolled onto his back and is just blinking up into Steve’s happy face, all flushed across the cheekbones as he pushes the loose hair that’s come down out of Bucky’s eyes with his fingertips, thumb tapping against his lower lip and his whole hand just big and safe on his face.

Blinking dizzily, Bucky just takes it when a finger pushes against his mouth, opens his lips on an involuntary sort of gasp and lets his eyes close. He hears Steve murmur some kind of expletive but he can’t respond, not with his tongue round two of Steve’s fingers and his brain switched between the calm and off setting.

With his back against the sheets, Bucky can feel the hot weight of Steve against his hip and he rolls himself experimentally. Steve makes a noise somewhere between a trapped animal and a man sinking into a hot bath and Bucky likes the sound so much, he does it again and again. Pressed chest to chest like this, every independent move they make seems to be setting the other off, like a fish hook of pleasure that’s just trapped under the skin. Every time one of them tugs, it slips deeper.

Such odd parts of the body are fair game for Steve’s explorations; he runs the damp finger down Bucky’s spine as he pulls him tight to his own body. The notches of Bucky’s vertebrae each feel like a bruise under his strong, skipping fingers, he shivers against the fleeting pressure on his hips, the crease of his thigh, the little divots at the small of his back, the part of him that is blood hot and makes him twist, push back against Steve’s fingers.

Bucky gets his kiss then, it’s an obvious attempt at distraction but Bucky plays along, sucking on Steve’s tongue as he wills himself to be soft and yielding, which isn’t all that difficult when everything about the way Steve is pushing at him makes him want to beg and promise anything, he feels instantly keyed up and besotted but violently aching all at once.

It’s so nice, so good, to have somebody who knows what he’s doing with this body. It’s about time, Bucky thinks. He trusts Steve implicitly in basically any situation, but it helps that in this particular arena, he seems to know better than Bucky where he likes to be touched. As a hand hooks under his knee, the subsequent ache is like the relief of resetting a bone, deep and absurdly tender. Bucky feels breached and completely untethered, is grateful for the eye contact, the wicked little smile that Steve is biting back.

It feels like handing over the keys of an expensive car you keep stalling to a formula one driver.

As soon as he has the thought, he mentally chides himself. He isn’t a machine. A fact he instantly proves by gasping out a series of rather incoherent expletives as Steve pushes his knee further up into his chest, his other hand moving in and against Bucky relentlessly and perfectly.

Steve’s hair is all hanging down, a funny counterpart to all the other firm touching as it tickles against Bucky’s chest, it is dark damp with sweat too and half obscuring his face. Bucky slides his wet hand up and away from where Steve has been pushing a perfect counterpoint into his fist, follows the path all the way up the front of his body just to tuck his hair behind his ear. He grins at the irritable groan this abandonment of his touch elicits, which turns to a delighted gasp as Steve puts more of his weight down, starts riding the crease of Bucky’s hip and pressing his head down into his chest, right over his heart.

Arching his whole body up with his heels digging into the matress, Bucky can't help it, he wants so much more than he's got, which is already enough to overwhelm him, and he's just shoving himself mindlessly against every part of Steve who's doing his best, safest, hottest job of driving Bucky insane. He grind himself down against Steve's hand and up into the other and he opens his mouth to try to ask for more, offer Steve the next thing, _anything_ , until it creeps right up on Bucky in a way that nothing ever has, except the thing that killed him the first time. And even then he was distracted by Steve.

History repeats.

Bucky is so busy looking at Steve’s eyelashes as he's ducking to kiss at the nearest part of his body, a smooth scar on his chest. He's so distracted and trying to catch his breath that Bucky doesn’t realise he’s being pulled under with the _follow me,_ coaxing crook of Steve’s fingers and the unyielding push of their bodies together until it’s too late.

And then he is desperately tearing opening his slammed shut eyes, because he wanted to _see,_ to commit this to the new, empty box he is setting up inside himself.

As he tries to remember how to feel less like a poked bruise and more like a breathing person, riding out the pleasure that's left him blinking, Bucky experiences a second of pure, lovely, selfishness from Steve as he just automatically takes his hands to rest on Bucky’s hips before one snaps up to his chest and then throat, fingers still wet and splaying on Bucky’s clavicle. He just moves like that, holding Bucky by the throat and the waist and just taking his pleasure out on him, pushing into the hot, oversensitive top of his kiss bitten thigh. Bucky keeps on petting at Steve’s hair and moaning, watching the play of muscles about his back and bearing witness to the hitched little two-part sob as he finishes.

He stops fighting and closes his eyes at last, because he doesn’t need to see to remember the soft kiss against his mouth, fond and claiming all at once, the way Steve shifts his weight from Bucky the second he’s clear of the haze of his pleasure or the contented little sigh they echo between them.

"What you said before-”

Bucky braces.

“-you don't think we should be," Steve asks, pulling back a fraction, "here?"

There's a hundred answers to that: of course they should, they've found each other again but is it really worth it? Maybe one of them probably definitely _shouldn't_ be here given the human cost of keeping them alive. Why the fuck are you bringing this up now Steve? Even your pillow talk is flawlessly thorough in its probing, horribly pertinent communication, you beautiful, emotionally clued up bastard.

"I don't like to argue with medical science," Bucky evades, voice wrecked, putting his palm over Steve's heart and right on the perfect handprint scar that's fading away even now, "it's given mankind a great deal to be thankful for."

Kissing someone just to shut them up is the oldest trick in the book, but Steve has always been self-aware about his battle plans and historically, his defences have never involved subtlety. Bucky, however, is about as noisy with his intentions as a slow knife in the ribs and as he returns the kiss he silently hooks an ankle up and behind Steve's knees, tipping him forward and off balance.

Bucky grunts with effort and joy as Steve lands all his weight on him, and then again when he doesn't break the kiss to apologise or retreat. Bucky is suddenly, bizarrely jealous of his own unconscious self, wonders how desperate Steve’s mouth must have been on his on the bank of Lake Victoria when it was the only thing keeping him alive.

This is the closest they will be to drowning again, Bucky decides. He could live with this level of no-real-danger but not wanting to break away to breathe. And he just can't think past all the _Steve_ around him. Even when the deep kisses withdraw and Steve just tucks his head into the crook of Bucky’s neck, breathes shakily into his ear and mouths tiredly at his throat, he can't get a proper inhale.

It's the most intense feeling in the world, screw death and orgasms and shocks directly to the brain, Bucky has a whole century of a smudgy dark blur of a life until this one bright thing: his hand fisted in Steve Rogers hair. It is too long and smells like a decontamination chamber and Bucky just can't stop petting at it.

He's pretty sure Steve is about to fall asleep on him so Bucky summons an enormous amount of self restraint and works himself out from underneath, turning so they're side by side again, nose to nose.

Steve's not asleep.

"Why are you crying?"

"Why are you?"

"What?" Bucky asks.

There's a rustle of the light sheets and soft blankets that have somehow found their way back over them as Steve brings his hand up and presses a thumb against Bucky’s cheek. True enough, his face is wet, can feel it between his skin and the rough pad of Steve's thumb before he withdraws his touch.

"Will you hit me if I say-"

"Don't you dare say-"

"-acid?"

"Goddamn it."

Steve is laughing and although it's a very damp thing, it's a real laugh right from his belly. It makes Bucky want to cry harder because apparently scientifically, neurologically deadened emotions are nothing against the power of Captain America, naked and laughing in his bed. Who knew.

"Are you alright?" Steve asks earnestly, the ghost of the laugh lurking somewhere under his beard.

"Peachy," Bucky says, and actually possibly means it.

Steve scoots closer somehow, pushes their foreheads together. Bucky senses a trap and narrows his eyes, softening somewhat when Steve kisses him right on the edge of the mouth. Bucky chases him and licks at a tear on his upper lip.

“Cut it out.”

"No. Tell me why."

"Because," Steve sighs not unhappily, "I suppose it might undo it all saying it aloud but I guess… it's just a relief isn't it? About time."

"For what?"

"Peace?"

"Ha. What are you gonna do with _peace_ Captain Rogers?" Bucky laughs right in his face, “you wouldn’t know it if it wrapped itself round a bullet and went flying at your head.”

"Honestly? Your peace? _This,_ right here?” he puts his hands on either side of Bucky’s face, "'m gonna fight to keep it."

Steve closes his eyes and after a moment, Bucky leans his head into the hands holding it and follows suit. It seems like the storm has followed them, chased them north. Rain is drumming against the stone walls and the lake nearby. The house holds steady though, the roof and the blankets pulled up half over their heads are a more than adequate shelter.

“You’re leaving,” Bucky twists further up the bed, tangled in the sheets, he feels like a jumping live wire and can’t settle, “in the morning?”

There’s a sadly mumbled affirmative against his chest and a solid, comforting hand against his back. Bucky hates resenting Steve his easy rest, how quickly his weight is turning to dead weight and how the huffs of breath against Bucky’s collarbone are evening out.

He’s going to leave this place, leave him. And there will be the cool sort of squabling fighting tomorrow, the jokes that sound a little like _don’t dies_ and _I love you’s_ that have to fit into everything else, every small and inconsequential thought that Steve’s smart mouth can’t keep to himself. The things that his big, stupid, lovely head can’t stop thinking. It’s a wicked combination and it’s gonna get him killed someday.

Again.

But for tonight neither of them are dying any faster than regular people. Bucky just lays awake, his arm going scarily numb under the weight sleeping on it. He waits fruitlessly for the rain to stop, reckons they have about seven hours till the storm passes and dawn lights up on the water and the golden trees. And then that’ll mean the door opening and watching Steve leave.

“Quit thinking so loud.”

There’s an elbow in his ribs and Bucky swears, kicks out and finds a defenceless shin. He presses his feet up against the warm skin there. Fully aware of how cold he runs, the resulting hiss of discomfort could’ve won Bucky money if he was a gambling kind of man.

“Quit sleeping so loud then.”

Steve replies with something wonderfully rude and Bucky kisses him on the top of the head in warped retaliation.

He’s not gonna make it to the sunrise, Bucky realises, either sleep will take him or Steve is gonna kill him with his smart mouth and his golden fucking heart and sure hands. Even now, half unconscious, Steve has his whole body between Bucky and the door, every one of the fingers of his left hand all tangled up in Bucky’s right.


End file.
